DIARIO POPULAR – The agreement with the creditors for the restructuring of some US $ 66,000 million of debt under foreign legislation will give the government considerable margin to address other problems of the macroeconomy, according to the opinion of different economists.
Aldo Abram: “Extremely positive agreement”
In this regard, the representative of the Fundación Libertad y Progreso, Aldo Abram, said that the understanding with the bondholders is “extremely positive in terms of access to credit” for the national State but much more so for “the productive private sector.”
Julián Zicardi: “allows ordering the macroeconomy”
For his part, Julián Zícari, economist at CONICET and the Gino Germani Institute, assessed that the aceurdo “allows the government to order the macroeconomy and make it more predictable for the next ten or fifteen years” and he trusted that, unlike on other occasions “This time it is different, because stubbornly Argentina is willing to hit a pineapple every so often”, to the point that in the last half century it had to endure “seven economic crises.”
Victor Beker: “the economic course must be set”
Víctor Beker, director of the Center for the Study of the New Economy (CENE) at the University of Belgrano, demanded that the government, once the debt issue and a possible renegotiation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been resolved, explain “the economic course “and begin to outline” the exit from quarantine “to” face the economic pandemic. “
“It was difficult to understand how a difference of just 3 cents on the dollar, after almost four months of negotiations, could prevent an agreement,” said Beker, who questioned the “alleged experts” who “hours before the official announcement predicted to chorus the failure of the negotiations and an irremediable default ”.
In statements to Diario Popular, Abram pointed out the importance of the agreement for the private sector, since he warned that the little access to international credit that it currently has “would have disappeared in the context of a total default.”
In any case, he stressed that the agreement does not represent the end of the difficulties, to the extent that the country does not tackle the structural reforms it needs at once.
“If the solution to Argentina’s underlying problems were only to have more credit, clearly Mauricio Macri would be in government today,” he said, referring to the assistance that the IMF gave to the previous administration.
On the contrary, he argued that “if we continue to spend more than we pay back, even if all the debt is forgiven in a short time, we will return to the same problem. And to those who don’t believe me, I remind them that in 2001 we had the largest default in history, in 2005 we renegotiated the debt with a 65% reduction and here we are ”.
As for the steps to follow, Zícari indicated that “the debt issued under local legislation and then the agreement with the IMF, which will undoubtedly be in better conditions than the existing one, remain to be closed.”
“Once the debt chapter has been closed and the worst stage of the pandemic will be overcome, by the end of the year we will have to wait for a full-speed recovery of the economy. But as the word says, recovery is not growth, “he stressed, alluding to the” rebound “in activity after the fall that has been recorded in the framework of the pandemic and quarantine.
The conditions for this, he noted, are auspicious for emerging countries in general and Argentina in particular, with a foreseeable rise in the price of raw materials and an increase in international trade.
